Hate speech is both the product and cause of dehumanization — a process defined by Professor Phillip Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect as a means “by which certain other people or collectives of them are depicted as less than human….”

Zimbardo writes:

“The process begins with stereotyped conceptions of the other,…conceptions of the other as worthless, the other as all-powerful,…the other as a fundamental threat to our cherished values and beliefs. With public fear notched up and enemy threat imminent, reasonable people act irrationally, independent people act in mindless conformity, and peaceful people act as warriors. Dramatic visual images of the enemy on posters, television, magazine covers, movies, and the internet imprint on the recesses of the limbic system, the primitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear and hate.”

Where we covered the scientific work of Zimbardo and others in Hate Speech and the Process of Dehumanization, and in a follow-up, demonstrating how the process applies both when directed to foreign “threats” and domestic “foes,” here the focus is the thin legal line, unique to the U.S. courtesy of the First Amendment, between advocacy and incitement, and whether some U.S. politicians and pundits may have, at least in the case of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, crossed that line so as to possibly warrant criminal prosecutions…

Being a sensitive human on rare occasions I will refrain from my Missionaries of Hate rant, the John Birch Society being Sharon Angle’s “My Middle America,” the reality of the Gabrielle Gifford battle back to consciousness and functioning. I’m being Middle Road today.